Release

by Naomi E Lloyd

  Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to!

  “We should go! Tiegal left a few minutes ago. I think she was heading back to her camp. We need to get to her, before any of the others see her. She needs to be contained!”

  Jovil raked his hands through his long wavy hair and nodded at her.

  “Yes, sorry, I don’t know what happened to me just then. It’s like my memory was wiped.”

  “That’s because Tiegal played some nasty little tricks on you when she emerged from the lagoon. Don’t worry I won’t tell Atla her magic worked on you and not on me. But we do need to get her before anyone else does. And…NOW!”

  Without hesitating, Jovil turned and ran towards the ladder.

  “Come on then Parador. Let’s go and get her!”

  Part Two

  Earth

  2065

  10.Journeys

  Johannes let his head sink into the pillow and closed his eyes, already feeling awkward - and slightly foolish.

  “Kagiso, you know I would do anything for you and I’ve always believed in your methods, but don’t you think this is taking it a bit too far?” he whispered, wriggling his bottom around to find a comfortable position on the old sofa Kagiso had insisted he lie down on.

  “And I’ve got to go and help Frederick with the chores. One of the cows is sure to go into labour soon and I promised to keep watch over her…” he continued, hoping Kagiso would come to her senses and let him go find his brother-in-law, who was no doubt struggling to manage the animals in this stifling heat. It was hard enough for them all to keep up with the demands of the farm as it was, the last thing they needed was distractions such as their beloved housekeeper, Kagiso, holding one of them back.

  “Johannes Smit! Stop this nonsense complaining and let me do my magic. You’re no good to anyone when your head is full of dreams you still haven’t bothered to understand! I keep telling you, you’ve got to listen to the messages or they’ll just keep plaguing you. And then what? You’ll go crazy!”

  Despite his frustration Johannes couldn’t help smiling. He rubbed at his eyes, still tightly shut, and waved his hand in the air to signal his compliance.

  He could hear Kagiso shuffling her feet on the stone floor of their kitchen.

  “How long will this take Kagiso? I don’t think Annarita or Frederick are going to be impressed if they see me lying here in the middle of the day when there’s so much work to be done on the farm,” he pleaded.

  “Shh… your sister is having a nap with the baby. Henri was awake all night, bless him. And I’ve told her she must rest when the baby does. And as for your brother-in-law, he is a good, strong man. Frederick can manage fine without you for a little while longer. We need to do this now Johannes, whilst the house is quiet and peaceful. It’s the only way I’ll be able to connect with whatever it is this spirit guide of yours is trying to tell you.”

  Johannes sighed. There was no use arguing with Kagiso when she laid down her law. Kagiso laid her clammy palm on his forehead and mumbled something about the turbulent journey her bittersweet boy had travelled.

  “I’m eighteen now Kagiso. I’m not a boy anymore, remember.” He dared to open his eyes, just a fraction, but she quickly drew her hands over his eyelids to smooth them back down.

  “Not in your dreams you’re not. When you go on your sleep journeys you visit another time, an earlier time, when your Ma was still here. I hear you in the night my boy. And that’s why we need to know what she is trying to tell you.” Kagiso’s voice trembled with each reference to his late mother. It made him feel sick, a revulsion that called for him to run away. And he would have done, if it were anyone else speaking of his mother like this. If he didn’t love Kagiso so much, then he would have pulled her hands away from his face, and run away, back to the cows, carts, and oxes that needed his attention.

  Instead, he inhaled and exhaled slowly, as she instructed, letting her voice carry across him, relaxing and soothing.

  “Go back there Johannes, to where you were last night, when you were talking to her. And tell me what you remember, what you can see around you,” she urged.

  He let his arm fall down to the floor from where it had been resting on his stomach, Kagiso’s gentle, deep voice already lulling him into a hypnosis. He felt his body shrinking, regressing, as though he were falling back through time.

  “What can you see?” Kagiso asked.

  “People, lots of them, by the river. Some standing, and others eating, sitting on blankets. A gathering of some kind? A party?” he whispered, vaguely aware that his voice sounded higher, squeakier.

  “Okay, good, now walk to where you feel drawn,” Kagiso instructed.

  Johannes squirmed from where he lay on the sofa, whilst simultaneously walking towards the people he saw in his mind; his body engaging in different actions in parallel conscience.

  “I can see where I want to go.” He smiled as he spoke, fully immersing himself in this scene by the river, strangely aware, and in awe, that his feet were a good five sizes smaller and that he was running towards his mother, in the body of his seven-year old self.

  It was the karros he noticed first; the woollen shawl she often wore around her shoulders. The one his father had traded with some Xhosa people who had been exploring the area from the Eastern Cape. He remembered how it was his mother’s favourite.

  His mother’s face lit up as he approached her, and she reached her arms out to him, pulling him easily onto her lap. He fell into her embrace, barely able to contain his tears.

  “Come here my son, you look like you need some love,” she whispered into his head, snuffling into him.

  “Look at you, with all this golden hair,” she marvelled, running her dainty fingers through his thick blonde curls, “still as fair as it was when I first laid eyes on you. And just like your father. A beautiful Dutch boy sparkling in these hot African lands, showing us all how we can live and journey together.”

  “I missed you!” he choked. “You left me.”

  His mother jerked back from him, her hands grasping around his cheeks.

  “Johannes Smit. I will never leave you. I’m always here. You know that really. You’ve always known it.”

  “But you’re not Ma! You’re not in the house with us anymore. You’ve missed so much. Annarita is married now and they have a baby…” he broke off at the sound of his sister – the eleven-year old version – giggling with her friends just behind them.

  “Yes, your sister is indeed lucky. She will find it is easy to love; and to be loved. But what about you, my boy? What do you seek where you are now?” she questioned, her voice soft and reassuring as she wiped his tears with her hand and then kissed the soft, wet skin of his cheeks.

  “I’m supposed to marry Elna. Just like Pa always said I would,” he answered her in a child-like voice he had forgotten he had once spoken. His mother frowned at him.

  “You must not be constrained by what is easily reached. Sometimes you have to travel further to find what your heart truly seeks.” Her voice trembled, and this time it was his hand that reached out to her cheek. With his right thumb and index finger he pressed his mother’s skin, using the soft pads of his fingertips to soak up her salty tears.

  “Does that mean, perhaps…my destiny is not with Elna?” he dared. The strange sound of his pre-pubescent voice referring to such an adult concept made him both squirm and squeak.

  He waited for her response, but none came. Instead she looked at him, her eyes wide and sad.

  “What is worth having is never easy to obtain,” she finally said.

  “Ma!” He reached out to touch her again, but she had already started to fade. Her features now lost as his vision blurred and the sound of Kagiso’s frantic voice called him back to his eighteen-year old body filled his ears.

  “Where did you go? You looked like you were shrinking right before my very eyes there boy.” Kagiso exclaimed, her hand already pulling on his arms to shake him back to reality.
>
  “I saw her Kagiso. I spoke to her,” he managed, gently pushing Kagiso away so that he could stretch his legs out and regain a sense of his size and form once more.

  “Your Ma? Or the girl? You kept saying something about that girl you’ve been courting, the one from the neighbouring farm.”

  Kagiso shook her head at him with such force it looked quite painful. Johannes smacked his lips together, as he always did when Kagiso was exaggerating her irritation about something - or someone.

  “The girl being… Elna, who you have known since she was little.”

  “Yes, yes, okay but why were you talking about her just then. You were supposed to be connecting with spirits, not girls who you can speak to every day!” she grumbled.

  In spite of himself, he laughed at the woman who had taken over the role of mothering him, and stood up to place his arms around her, drawing her close to his chest. Her head only reached the base of his sternum. He leaned his mouth down to kiss the top of her head, his nose wrinkling as her hair tickled his nostrils.

  “I did find a connection Kagiso. I found my Ma again,” he whispered.

  He felt Kagiso’s shoulders relax in his arms as she registered his words.

  “What did she say?” she breathed into his chest. He could feel the movement of her shaking body; the tell-tale sign that she was holding back her tears. He gave her a gentle squeeze.

  “She said…” he hesitated, unsure how much he should, or indeed wanted, to share.

  “That she hadn’t really left. And that she was always here,” he finally answered.

  Johannes desperately needed to scratch his back. He twisted his left arm at an awkward angle, struggling to balance holding onto Henri, whilst using his other arm to wipe away the nervous sweat that was now trickling down between his shoulders.

  Annarita had asked him to bathe his baby nephew and he hadn’t felt he could refuse her. To be fair, his sister was usually soft with him when he tried to bow out of household chores; it rarely took more than a wink before she would give into him, but tonight her instinct – more motherly than sisterly - seemed to keep him from venturing away from the house.

  Johannes clenched his jaw as he splashed water over the rolled-up baby fat of his baby nephew’s legs. Henri was an easy baby, always happy kicking his feet up and down in the tin bath. Johannes normally enjoyed spending time with him, just not tonight.

  The sun was still stifling and despite moving the large bath into the shade of the garden, his clothes were drenched in sweat. Damn! He would have to go back inside and change his shirt before meeting Elna.

  He couldn’t afford to be late. Elna would expect him to be at the river at six. They always met at this time and she hated it when he was late.

  “Why are you acting so jittery today Johannes? Are you up to something, yes?” Annarita probed.

  “I’m just going to be late again that’s all!” he responded, careful to avoid looking in her in the eye. The last thing he wanted was to engage his sister in a debate about the merits of his choice in girlfriend. Annarita had made her objections about Elna’s possessiveness clear, on more than one occasion.

  “I keep telling you Annarita, she is not who you think she is. If you just spent time with her you would see what I see,” he grunted, whilst his hands slipped under Henri’s wet body, forcing him to grab the baby’s arms and swing him upwards before his sister caught sight of his negligent uncle duties.

  “I saw that!” Annarita muttered, in a tone that indicated she was neither worried, nor concerned about his mistake. He knew his sister loved her baby dearly, but he also knew how much she valued her rest and that she was grateful for any help she could get – careless brother or not.

  Johannes frowned as he watched his sister struggling to rise from her garden chair, her hands clutching her hips before she steadied herself on the nearby fence. This was not the sight of a healthy, twenty-two-year old girl and he cursed – not for the first time - the doctor who had taken too long to arrive when Annarita went into labour three months ago. Their mother would turn in her grave to think her daughter had endured such pain with no medical help.

  “Sorry Annarita! He’s getting quite strong.”

  Johannes pulled Henri out of the bath, wrapped him up in the thin cotton towel Annarita had thrown his way, and then squeezed him, as tightly to his chest as he dared, breathing in his addictive smell.

  “Why do babies smell so different?” he whispered into the edge of the towel where it rested on the wet hairs of Henri’s soft head.

  “It’s God’s way of ensuring we don’t drop them so easily! That we like them enough to keep them safe. Even if they do poo and cry all the time.”

  Annarita groaned and then stretched her legs out in front of her, her mouth widening into an exhausted yawn. She looked almost ten years older than her age, splayed out in her chair in the shade of the evening sun, her cotton dress and dirty apron buttoned unevenly.

  Just seeing her like this made Johannes furious, almost to the point of tears.

  “Ah Henri’s a good’un. You just had a harder time than most bringing him into the world. But you do look so tired sister. I wish that you had more help. That between us we could make it all better.”

  He held Henri close to him, rocking him from side to side, all thoughts of an impatient girlfriend waiting by the river for him now gone.

  “I have more than most do. Between you, Frederick, and Kagiso we are doing just fine.”

  The way his sister smiled at him, with such a determined effort to hide her pain and fatigue, conjured the dreaded, but faithful, feeling of grief that lived within him. She looked exactly like their mother when she pulled such an expression.

  “I know you have a great husband and Frederick is a really good dad but we both have so much work to do if we are going to keep the farm going and Kagiso is … well, just Kagiso!” he managed to chuckle.

  “Oi! Who you calling just Kagiso?”

  Johannes and Annarita laughed in unison at the sound of their beloved housekeeper; the woman who had not only raised them after their parents had died, but had also given them more love and laughter than any other parent they knew in their neighbourhood.

  “She has a point Johannes. Kagiso is more than a just, she’s well, everything!” Annarita leaned forward, this time with more ease, as she reached her arms out to take her baby from Johannes’ arms.

  “Ah, now, don’t you even be thinking about doing that. This baby is already fatter than most six-month olds and you have got little more strength than a baby bird. Sit yourself down Annarita,” Kagiso instructed, batting flies away from around her face as she stomped over to Johannes and promptly yanked baby Henri from his arms.

  “And you, young man, need to get cleaned up before you think of meeting that girl of yours,” she scolded, shooing him away with her over-sized apron. It was remarkably clean and pristine in comparison to Annarita’s.

  Johannes gave Kagiso his broadest smile, planting a kiss on her cheek, another on baby Henri’s wet head, and then finally one more on his sister’s cheek.

  “That’s right! I really do have to go! The sun will be setting soon, and my girl is waiting!”

  11. Stones

  After taking care to change his shirt and leave the house in an inconspicuous manner, waving casually as he closed the kitchen door, he started to run as soon as he was out of view. The point on the river, where Elna would be waiting, was close to her house but far enough away from both their residences to put them safely in the no-man’s land between the two. At least, he hoped it was safe. If her father caught sight of him, he would surely order him over to join him for a ‘gentlemanly drink’ – the kind that was impossible to get away from in any hurry.

  He saw Elna pacing by the muddy banks under the shade of a large tree. She was banging a long stick against her grey cotton skirt and humming to herself. It made him smile as he listened, keeping a little distance from her before making his presence known.


  “Hey there, I’m sorry I’m late,” he called out to her. She looked startled.

  “I was beginning to think you would not be coming to see me Johannes and I cannot stay too long. My family will be wondering where I am. I said I would be back for a cake later!” She rushed her words out, averting her eyes from him as she spoke, in a tone that sounded close to tears.

  Damn! How could I forget it was her birthday today?

  He scolded himself silently, frantically thinking of a gift he could promise her that would soon arrive. When nothing came to mind, he resorted to a tried and tested tactic he had seen Frederick use on Annarita, on more than one occasion:

  “Elna, Elna, Elna. I think I could keep saying that word a thousand times. It makes me think of a beautiful girl one may be driven to write about in a poem.”

  He paused and waited for her reaction. When none came, he decided to try option two: distraction.

  “Hey, were you named after anyone Elna? I can’t believe I have never asked you that before.”

  He had no idea where such a bizarre question had come from, or why he thought talking to her in such a florid manner would distract her from his forgetfulness. Fortunately, Elna did not seem perturbed. She nodded at him slowly, her huge oval blue eyes staring at him, and then looked down to her feet, scuffing her brown shoes into the dusty earth, clear evidence that her father had been serving out field chores for her once again. He looked at his own feet, covered by the boots he wore, but just as worn and calloused underneath. He had this sudden urge to rub her feet in warm water, the way his mother had done for him when he was younger, to ease the pain of long days tending the fields. In a strange way, she reminded him of his mother. Not her face - they could not have been more different in appearance - but the way she held herself, her calm, deep-thinking gaze. He didn’t understand why he found it so difficult to connect with her; or at least, in the way he knew she was longing him to.